“Baghdad” on The Daily Caller

Former President George W. Bush was forced to cancel a planned trip to Switzerland this week over concerns of protests linked to the Bush adminstration’s treatment of detainees. (more)

A car bomb has ripped through a funeral tent in a mainly Shia Muslim area of Baghdad, killing 48 people. (more)

1.) Washington’s Funniest Celebrity tries new routine on ‘This Week’ — White House economic advisor and stand-up comic Austan Goolsbee told some really bad jokes yesterday on “This Week,” alleges David Frum. “I don’t see why anybody’s talking about playing chicken with the…with the debt ceiling.” Goolsbee said yesterday. Also: “If we hit the debt ceiling, that’s…essentially defaulting on our obligations, which is totally unprecedented in American history” and that it would “be the first default in history caused purely by insanity.” While the aforementioned superlative is debatable, the rest of Goolsbee’s claim is not. As David Frum points out, Goolsbee is jousting with windmills: Two weeks after the election, Rep. John Boehner said, “Whether we like it or not, the federal government has obligations and we have obligations on our part.” More likely, writes Frum, is that Obama is playing chicken not with debt, but with Americans’ confidence. That’s not funny at all. (more)

Liam Neeson is the voice of Aslan the Lion in the new 3-D Narnia film, “Voyage of the Dawn Treader.” He’s got a great voice for the role. Neeson is even from the North of Ireland, the same area from which C.S. Lewis, the beloved Christian author of The Chronicles of Narnia, hailed. (more)

The liberal love affair with Islam is perplexing.  While liberals tend to hate traditional Christianity for its more socially conservative worldview, they insist on vigorously defending Islam and its adherents.  From Jon Stewart’s moralizing, to Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg’s outrage at Bill O’Reilly, to President Obama’s recent droning about the “spirit of tolerance” in the Indonesian Constitution (in spite of Indonesia’s laws prohibiting speech offensive to Islam), we are forever sermonized that there is a gulf between Islamist extremism and the “vast majority” of normal Muslims, whom we would apparently love to have as neighbors and run into at Whole Foods. (more)

Interview with “Fair Game” director Doug Liman (more)

On Dec. 22, 2006, American military officials in Baghdad issued a secret warning: The Shiite militia commander who had orchestrated the kidnapping of officials from Iraq’s Ministry of Higher Education was now hatching plans to take American soldiers hostage. (more)

Paul Kengor is the author of the new book, “DUPES: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century.” The political science professor and executive director of the Center for Vision and Values at Grove City College has previously authored such books as “God and Ronald Reagan” and “The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism.” (more)

BAGHDAD—Sheikh Fawzi Abdullah, imam of a Sunni mosque in the capital city’s Amil section, looks with relief on the uneasy peace that has settled over his neighborhood. (more)

Some here joke that they might be safer if they lived in Baghdad. The numbers bear them out. (more)

Retired Marine Gunnery Sergeant Nick Popaditch is one of the few politicians who can legitimately be called a “hero.” Challenging Democratic incumbent Rep. Bob Filner for California’s 51st district, Popaditch has decided to go from arugably America’s noblest profession to one often derided for being among the slimiest. (more)

Tariq Aziz is slumped on a tattered brown sofa seat cradling his walking stick and cigarettes, his gaunt face topped, incongruously for a practising Christian, by a Muslim prayer cap. It is perhaps only the familiar black-ringed spectacles that signal to the visitor that this was Iraq’s former face to the world – Saddam Hussein’s right-hand man, his most powerful deputy. (more)

The lack of controversy over the August 31 transition ending combat operations in Iraq is a testament to the U.S. military. Though few are willing to declare it, America won the war in Iraq. Twice. (more)

BAGHDAD (AP) — A sandstorm downed an Iraqi military helicopter Wednesday, killing its five-man crew, while midmorning Baghdad bombings claimed the lives of six people, officials said. (more)

The appointment of General David Petraeus to lead the American and allied forces in Afghanistan has revived claims that the surge he oversaw in Iraq succeeded.  Even President Barack Obama, who opposed the surge, is reported to have conceded, “it turned out to be a good thing” before announcing his own surge in Afghanistan. (more)

“Hey, Frank. Can you believe it was only 18 months ago you guys announced the sale of the first piece of BP — that $10 billion Alaska plot they nicknamed Palin’s Peaks — to start paying for their Gulf clean up?  And today, they’re auctioning off their last field, that hell-hole in Nigeria.” (more)

WASHINGTON — The soldier accused of downloading a huge trove of secret data from military computers in Iraq appears to have exploited a loophole in Defense Department security to copy thousands of files onto compact discs over a six-month period. In at least one instance, according to those familiar with the inquiry, the soldier smuggled highly classified data out of his intelligence unit on a disc disguised as a music CD by Lady Gaga. (more)

Where’s the outrage over this headline? (more)

BAGHDAD — Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. landed here on Saturday evening for a visit that signaled a desire by the United States to step deeper into a four-month political stalemate that has become a backdrop to the drawdown of American forces this summer. (more)

NEAR TULUL AL-BAQ, Iraq — President Obama has set an August deadline for the end of the combat mission in Iraq. Here at this makeshift desert camp in the insurgent badlands of northern Iraq, a mission is under way that is not going to stop then: American soldiers hunting terrorists and covertly watching an Iraqi checkpoint staffed by police officers whom the soldiers say they do not trust. (more)